Tentacle-Free Anime: Double "Mushi-Shi"! Live-action & Anime

As an anime fan, I am very well adapted to the wait between seasons. Some series just take way longer to come out than other. Mushi-Shi is one of them. It is a series I truly enjoy, and due to its incredibly episodic nature and chill attitude, I was oddly calm that the last series did not have a proper ending. Fast-forward nine years and the show that came out in 2005 is now getting a second season in mid 2014. Color me excited. So in honor of this special announcement, I decided to cover 2 Mushi-Shi related stories at once, the special animated chapter that was recently broadcast and the live-action movie. Let’s Go!

Summary:When an eclipse occurs, the sun remains dark in one area. The mushi expert Ginko must come and determine how to return the sun to the village before their crops die. The secret seems connected to two twin girls who live nearby.[AnimeNewsNetwork.com]

What would you do if the sun was being eaten by a parasitic life form, and to stop it you had to damn a little girl from ever being free, from ever going outside again? To most this would be an easy choice, ‘the needs of the many outweight the needs of the few’, as an old saying goes. But not everyone has that kind of conscience, and this is a dilemma Ginko must figure out before the sun is blacked out and casts an eternal winter over a single village.

Promo image featuring Ginko

One thing I always enjoy about a mushi story, and really what captivates me the most about the mushi (“ethereal organisms comprised of and related to the source of all life”) themselves, is that they are life forms like us that simply need the world to survive. We affect them just as much as they affect us, and yet only a few that roam the world, exist to figure out how we can best co-exist. To most others we are all just creatures fighting to come out on top. The mushi aren’t the bad guys of the series, there really is no “bad guy” of this series, and that’s why Ginko exists - to remind us that the mushi don’t live to simply cause harm humans and animals, like human and animals they simply exist to survive.

The mushi in this adventure hates the sun, and can only come out of hiding during an eclipse, where it attempts to keep its area from ever having light again, so it can survive outside freely.

Unfortunately, that affects the villagers, until twin girls Hiyori and Hinata help find a way out of this mess. Their stories are quite tragic, and I think something most twins can relate to (I could be wrong): you have Hinata, the twin who can do anything and Hiyori who is not seen in the same light as her sister. Except here, the concept is adapted quite literally: Hiyori was born unable to be out in the sun, thanks to a mushi that infected only her while in the womb. Hinata was unaffected, though, and can go outside, play and make friends. This causes a strong rift in Hiyori and Hinata’s sisterhood as time passes and Hiyori grows bored of her containment.

Hiyori finds herself in a field of glowing flowers.

Hiyori loves that the sun-eating mushi can allow her to go outside, something she hasn’t done for years, and she takes advantage of it, finding her way to the field of flowers her sister had always wanted to show her. It’s Hiyori, though, who goes through the biggest character arc, and in a lot of was is our main protagonist throughout this special. She has to choose between the village and her own selfish desires. Unfortunately, failing to decide sooner almost costs her the life of her sister. I won’t spoil, but I really like where the two sisters end up, in terms of their relationship, when the chapter ends. And I like that Mushi-Shi continues to focus on those most affected by the mushi, rather than Ginko himself (as he’s the one who already knows about the mushi). To help us understand, we need to see the story through the eyes of those the mushi affect.

One does not simply catch a sun-eating mushi.

Hiroshi Nagahama, the director of the original series (and director of Flowers of Evil) and ArtLand, animators of the original series return to take on this special. I assume they will also be around for the second season. I hope so, because this special looks amazing. The sun-eating mushi looked menacing with its dark tendrils floating up in the sky. The world in fact seemed hopeless and still it looked beautiful in that hopelessness.

Hundreds of mushi flock to the sun-eating mushi.

The biggest flaw of this episode is that it’s a story, that could’ve been told in 30 minutes, just like each of the episodes from the original series. It doesn’t feel as if enough was accomplished in an hour when I’ve before seen plenty accomplished between two-episodes that span the same amount of run time. I do hope the newest season will follow the formula of the first, because I don’t want to come away liking a story but also feeling like it could have been a lot shorter or at least filled with more events.Final Score: 4 Glowing Flowers out of 5

Summary:Mushi are ethereal organisms comprised of and related to the source of all life. Their very existence is enough to spur on supernatural phenomena. Ginko is a Mushi-Shi, one who investigates and counteracts the ill-effects of mushi encounters/infestations. As Ginko wanders from town to town learning more about the mushi and helping those in his wake; we learn the fate that brought him into his present circumstances.

Oh ho Otomo, you really are a man of a profound nature, do you know that? I’m sure you do, and it shows in your works like Akira, Memories and this movie. Which, in a lot of ways, that’s quite fitting given the very nature-heavy feeling this movie has going for it. This is a 2 hour movie that packs a lot into it, taking about four or five of my favorite stories from the anime and smashing them into one big film. So, with that being said, why did this movie still feel as if it was the slowest moving 2 hours of my life?

DVD cover for the movie.

This is the weird thing about Mushi-Shi, I love its slow pacing, cause it’s able to wrap all that story up in 30 minutes in any given episode so that it doesn’t feel too slow; and I complained in my above review that I wished the animated special would’ve more events happening in it, so it would’ve felt more accomplished. Otomo puts a whole bunch of events into this movie and still this movie feels as if it could’ve been a lot shorter. And given the ending I really wish it had been.

See, this isn’t a bad movie. Far from it in fact, but it is a movie you will have to set aside an evening for. The story does put a much heavier focus on Ginko than the anime does. While the anime allows us to see the world through the supporting casts’ eyes, this movie gives us the world almost exclusively through Ginko’s. And that’s fine, too; I even think it works here, giving us a Ginko that feels just a tad younger and wilder than his anime counterpart.

He feels more inexperienced and I like that, and Joe Odagiri does a wonderful job portraying the mushi-shi (mushi-master) adding a bit of charm and human wonder to the man with one eye and white hair.

We also get a heavier focus on Ginko’s back-story, which I must say caught me off guard. The non-linear storytelling of two Ginkos (present and past) is handled incredibly well, though exactly how Ginko comes to be the white haired, one-eyed man is handled mush less efficiently. See, the mushi here are not explained incredibly well, because there are so many of them. Any given episode of the anime may focus on one, maybe two mushi at a time giving you plenty of time to digest what these creatures are like. This movie doesn’t, and even someone like me, who is familiar with a lot of these different types of mushi, got a bit lost in the fold at one point.

Joe Odagiri as Ginko.

Speaking of the mushi, I watched this in Japanese with English subtitles, and oh boy the subtitles. I cannot comprehend why the mushi themselves, such as Kouki and Tokoyami for instance (don’t worry, you don’t have to remember what those are, I’m just discussing the names here) are allowed to keep their original Japanese names in the English translation but the word ‘mushi’ is never uttered once in the entire movie. Instead, the word ‘mushi’ is replaced with the word ‘bug’ and any mushi are in fact bugs, which I suppose this means actual bugs don’t exist in this world alongside humans and mushi? I’m not a big fan of ants myself. And to be fair, the actors themselves do say ‘mushi’ but the subtitles consistently call them ‘bugs’ instead, and I don’t exactly jive with that, it just seems so nonsensical to me.

Makiko Esumi as Nui, a woman from Ginko's past.

This world does feel genuinely real though, with vast landscapes of beautiful green mountains and hillsides. The character’s travels also feel as if they take days to get anywhere, instead of an awkward scene transition that skips the whole journey like most movies do. Sure, we don’t get to see but key moments throughout any given hike, but we get enough that makes this movie feel more about the journey than the destination. And that’s where it all comes to in the end, as Otomo offers up his signature interpretive ending that leaves the viewer wondering exactly what was this adventure supposed to mean, and what does the viewer even need to take away from it. Unfortunately, this ending is just a bit too abrupt and I feel it undermines the entire story and build up as Ginko’s past comes back to haunt him. Meaning once again we get a story where I think everything up until the final moments is pretty okay, if not forced in a few places to speed the ending along. Like if Otomo knew he’d spent too long on Ginko walking around, and wasn’t sure how he’d end his adventure in the time needed.

Yue Aoi as Tanyu, who is using giant preistly chopsticks to seal away some mushi.

Mushi-Shi: The Movie is a nice companion piece to the anime and manga, and I think any fan of the world Ginko inhabits will find a lot to like about this. I know I did, thanks to the addition of some very interesting characters, the beautiful handling of the country sides, and the mushi themselves being used to fascinating and also very creepy effect. The tale of two Ginkos was actually also a big treat, and I’m kind of glad it took me so long to figure that was what I was seeing. On the downside, again, this story is too slow for its own good and the ending suffers for it. Still, you should check it out, given you’re a shut in like me, who also loves movies as much as I do.Final Score: 3 Ginko’s out of 5

Well, that's a lot of Mushi-Shi! Hope you picked up on the links sprinkled throughout this article, pointing to other relevant TFA installments. How did you enjoy these movies and the review?